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MIKE GRAVEL

"The United
States is the largest economic unit in the world. Responsible
stewardship of our economy requires that we maintain our superpower
status, not only in terms of military capability, but in equally
important areas such as the strength and solvency of our economy, the
educational and physical health of our population, and a firm commitment
to our moral principles and spiritual values. Strength in all these
areas is vital to maintain our superpower status." - Mike Gravel

Statistics
-

CAMPAIGN
SLOGAN: "Let the People Decide."

FULL
NAME: Maurice Robert Gravel

DATE
OF BIRTH: May 13, 1930

AGE:
77

ASTROLOGICAL
SIGN: Taurus

SPOUSE:
Whitney Stewart

CHILDREN:
Martin and Lynne

PETS:
Ginger - Dog

RESIDENCE:
Arlington County, VA

RELIGION:
Unitarian

PROFESSION:
Politician, Real Estate Developer

FAVORITE
BOOK/LAST READ: Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of
American Superpower; American Theocracy; Collapse; House of War

TALENTS:
Speaks French, can drive a cab and brake a train, skilled at house
painting & construction

QUICK
FACT: Mike, a dyslexic, is most prominently known for his release
of the Pentagon Papers, the secret official study that revealed the
lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations that
misled the country into the Vietnam War. In addition, he
waged a successful one-man filibuster in 1971 for five months that
forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the
draft in the United States.

Maurice
Robert "Mike" Gravel is a former two-term Democratic United
States Senator from Alaska and is primarily known for his efforts in ending
the draft following the Vietnam War and for having put into the public
record the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Gravel
and his second wife, Whitney Stewart Gravel, live in Arlington County,
Virginia. They have two grown children, Martin Gravel and Lynne Gravel
Mosier.

Gravel
was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to French-Canadian immigrant parents,
Marie Bourassa and Alphonse Gravel. There, he was raised and educated, in
parochial schools, as a Roman Catholic, attending Assumption College
Preparatory School. Gravel enlisted in the United States Army in 1951 and
served in the Counter Intelligence Corps until 1954. A dyslexic, who talks
about his learning disability openly, he attended Columbia University's
School of General Studies, where he studied economics. Gravel was married to
the former Rita Martin from 1958 until around 1980.

Gravel moved to Alaska
in 1956, without funds or a job, looking for a place he could become a
politician. He found work in several areas, including real estate sales,
brakeman for the Alaska Railroad, and a successful property developer on the
Kenai Peninsula. Meanwhile, he ran unsuccessfully for the territorial
legislature in 1958 and for the Anchorage City Council in 1960. He ran for
the Alaska House of Representatives representing Anchorage in 1962 and won.Gravel served in the Alaska House of
Representatives from 1963 to 1966, winning re-election in 1964. During 1965
and 1966, he served as the Speaker of the House. He did not run for
re-election in 1966, instead choosing to run for Alaska's seat in the U.S.
House of Representatives, losing to incumbent Democrat Ralph Rivers.

In 1968 he ran against
incumbent Democratic Senator Ernest Gruening, a popular former governor, for
his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate. Gravel's campaign was based on
his youth and his use of persuasive television advertisements, and he
unexpectedly beat Gruening in the primary and went on to win the general
election, gaining 45% of the vote against 37% for Republican Elmer E.
Rasmuson and 18% for Gruening, who ran a write-in campaign as an
Independent.Gravel served on the
Environment and Public Works Committee throughout his Senate career. He also
served on the Finance and Interior Committees and he chaired the Energy,
Water Resources, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees.

In the late 1960s and
early 1970s the Pentagon was in the process of performing calibration tests
for a nuclear warhead that, upon investigation, was revealed to be obsolete.
The Cannikin tests involved the detonation of nuclear bombs under the seabed
of the North Pacific at Amchitka Island, Alaska. Gravel opposed the tests in
Congress and organized worldwide environmental opposition to their
continuation. The program was halted after the second test.Nuclear
power was considered an environmentally clean alternative for the commercial
generation of electricity and was part of a popular national policy for the
peaceful use of atomic energy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gravel publicly
opposed this policy in 1970. He used his office to organize citizen
opposition to the policy and to persuade Ralph Nader's organization to join
the opposition.

In 1971 Gravel played
a key role in the release of the Pentagon Papers — a large collection of
secret government documents pertaining to the Vietnam War — which were
made public by former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg. Gravel
inserted 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his
Senate Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds. These pages were later issued
by the Beacon Press as the "Senator Gravel Edition" — the most
complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published. The "Gravel
Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and
included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and
progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn.Also
in 1971, Gravel embarked on a one-man filibuster against legislation
renewing the military draft. Using various parliamentary maneuvers, Gravel
was able to block the bill for five months before President Richard Nixon
and Senate Republicans agreed to allow the draft to expire in 1973.

Six months before
United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret mission to the
People's Republic of China in July 1971, Gravel introduced legislation to
recognize and normalize relations with the PRC.In
1973, Gravel introduced an amendment to empower the Congress to make the
policy decision about the construction of the Alaska Pipeline. The amendment
passed the Senate by a single vote. The pipeline has been responsible for
20% of the U.S. oil supply.Gravel
opposed the Alaskan fishing industry in advocating American participation in
the formation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
For two years he opposed legislation that permitted the U.S. to unilaterally
take control of the 200-mile waters bordering its land mass. The legislation
was passed, and the United States has signed but never ratified the UNCLOS.He helped secure a private grant to
facilitate the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference in 1977, attended by Inuit
representatives from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. These conferences now
also include representatives from Russia.In
the early 1970s Gravel supported a demonstration project that established
links between Alaskan villages and the National Institute of Health in
Bethesda, Maryland, for medical diagnostic communications.Gravel
authored and secured the passage into law of the General Stock Ownership
Corporation (GSOC), Subchapter U of the Tax Code, as a prerequisite to a
failed 1980 Alaskan ballot initiative that would have paid dividends to
Alaskan citizens for Pipeline-related revenue.

Gravel
actively campaigned for the office of Vice President of the United States
during the 1972 presidential election. At the 1972 Democratic National
Convention, he was nominated by Bettye Fahrenkamp, the national
committeewoman of Alaska. The senator then addressed the convention and won
226 delegate votes, coming in third behind Senator Thomas Eagleton of
Missouri, who was convention Presidential nominee George McGovern's choice,
and Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Texas, in chaotic balloting
after many delegates were unsatisfied by McGovern's choice.In
1974 Gravel was re-elected to the Senate, winning 58% of the vote against
42% for Republican C. R. Lewis.In
1980 Gravel was challenged for the Democratic Party's nomination by State
Representative Clark Gruening, the grandson of the man Gravel had defeated
in a primary 12 years earlier. Gruening won the nomination but went on to
lose in the general election to Republican Frank Murkowski.

In the years since,
Gravel has been a real estate developer in Anchorage and Kenai, Alaska,
consultant, and founder and head of The Democracy Foundation, which promotes
direct democracy. Gravel led an effort to get a United States Constitutional
amendment to allow voter-initiated federal legislation similar to state
ballot initiatives. He argued that Americans are able to legislate
responsibly, and that the Act and Amendment in the National Initiative would
allow American citizens to become "law makers."

On April 17, 2006,
Gravel became a declared candidate for the Democratic nomination for
President of the United States in the 2008 election, announcing his run in a
speech to the National Press Club. Short on campaign cash, he took public
transportation to get to his announcement.Gravel's
campaign is based primarily on his ardent support for direct democracy (the
National Initiative), but also emphasizes his support for a national sales
tax and abolition of the IRS, immediate withdrawal from the war in Iraq, a
single payer national health care system, and term limits during his
campaign.

On April 26, 2007 he
took part in the first Democratic presidential debate at South Carolina
State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. During the debate he
suggested a Democratic bill criminalizing the war in Iraq. He also advocated
positions such as opposing preemptive nuclear war. He stated that the Iraq
War had the effect of creating more terrorists and that the "war was
lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis".
Overall, Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally
staid multiple-candidate format.In a recent television
appearance Mike Gravel discussed numerous positions and suggestions. He
suggested a program of "Kelso economics". Responding to a caller
on a CSPAN program asking about marijuana and the drug war, Gravel stated
“That one is real simple, I would legalize marijuana. You should be able
to buy that at a liquor store.” Some of his political
leanings and convictions may also be learned from the content of his
1972-published manifesto, Citizen Power, in which he advocated the
implementation of numerous populist ideas, such as

a guaranteed
annual income (dubbed the "Citizen's Wage"),

public financing
of elections,

progressive tax
with no deductions or exemptions,

steps against the
military-industrial complex (which he calls the "Warfare
State"),

a national law to
do away with voter registration and other barriers to voting,

abolition of the
death penalty,

universal health
care, school vouchers,

a drastic
reduction in government secrecy, and an end to America's imperialistic
foreign policy.

The book also
contained the complete text of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of
Rights, and the complete platform adopted by the Populist Party during the
1892 presidential election.

Senator Gravel's
position on Iraq remains clear and consistent: to commence an
immediate and orderly withdrawal of all U.S. troops that will have
them home within 60 days. The sooner U.S. troops are withdrawn, the
sooner we can pursue aggressive diplomacy to bring an end to the civil
war that currently consumes Iraq. Senator Gravel seeks to work with
neighboring countries to lead a collective effort to bring peace to
Iraq.

One of the
leading opponents of the Vietnam War, Senator Gravel was one of the
first current or former elected officials to publicly oppose the
planned invasion of Iraq in 2002. He appeared on MSNBC prior to the
invasion insisting that intelligence showed that there were indeed no
weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq posed no threat to the United
States and that invading Iraq was against America’s national
interests and would result in a disaster of epic proportions for both
the United States and the Iraqi people.

Today, more than
four years into the invasion, the death toll of U.S. troops has
climbed over 3,300 with over 50,000 more permanently maimed, some
having lost limbs, others their sight. Tens of thousands more are
afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and urgently need
psychological care. The Iraqi civilian death toll nears three-quarters
of a million, and still there remains no end in sight to the
bloodshed.

As President,
Senator Gravel will call for a U.S. corporate withdrawal from Iraq and
hand over reconstruction contracts to Iraqi businesses which will
empower Iraqi nationals to reconstruct their own country.

Iran:

Senator Gravel
firmly opposes a military confrontation with Iran and advocates a
diplomatic solution to the current situation. Several signs indicate
that the Bush administration is moving towards a military
confrontation with Iran and Syria; the deployment of a "major
strike group" of ships to the Persian Gulf, the detaining of six
Iranian officials of a consular office flying the Iranian flag,
pointed accusations that both nations are fueling the insurgency in
Iraq and the President’s remarks that the U.S. would disrupt the
flow of support from Iran and Syria to those insurgents. The threat of
war against another sovereign nation while wars continue to rage in
Iraq, the Palestinian Authority and Afghanistan, only serves to
further threaten global stability.

The
National Initiative for Democracy:

The National
Initiative for Democracy is a federal ballot initiative. The central
power of government is lawmaking. Therefore, the people must be
empowered to make laws if they are ever to gain control of their
government.

There is only
one entity in the U.S. that pays taxes: the individual. Businesses and
corporations do not, they merely collect taxes from consumers of their
products and pass on the taxes to the government. The Fair Tax
proposal calls for eliminating the IRS and the Income Tax and
replacing it with a progressive national Sales Tax on new products and
services. To compensate for necessities, such as food, lodging,
clothing, etc there would be a “prebate” to reimburse taxpayers
for the taxes paid on necessities.

Senator Gravel
believes that global climate change is a matter of national security.
As President, he will act swiftly to reduce America's carbon footprint
in the world by passing legislation that caps emissions, and lead the
fight against global deforestation, which today is second only to the
energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases.

However, any
legislation will have little impact on the global environment if we do
not work together with other global polluters. Today, China and India
are surpassing the U.S. in carbon emissions. Fighting global warming
can only be effective if it is a collective global effort. As
President, Senator Gravel will see that the U.S. launches and leads a
massive global scientific effort to end energy dependence on oil and
integrate the world's scientific community in this task.

Universal
Healthcare Vouchers:

Senator Gravel
advocates a universal health-care voucher program in which the federal
government would issue annual health care vouchers to Americans based
on their projected needs. Under the Senator's plan, all Americans
would be fully covered and would be free to use their vouchers to
choose their own health care professional. No one would ever be denied
health insurance because of their health, wealth, or any other reason.
A universal health-care voucher plan will also relieve American
businesses of the financial responsibility of insuring their workers
while ensuring that their workers get adequate care.

Immigration:

Senator Gravel
favors protecting our borders and monitoring the flow of illegal
immigrants into our country. He also favors a guest worker program and
setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring existing
illegal immigrants into legal status.

The senator's
position is that America must address the root cause of illegal
immigration. Any discussion of Mexican immigration must include NAFTA
and the concept of "free trade." The North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been a disaster for the working class of
both the US and Mexico. A study by the Economic Policy Institute found
that over 1,000,000 US jobs were lost as a result of NAFTA, a third of
them manufacturing jobs. In Mexico, 1.3 million farm workers lost
their jobs in the same period. This has led to a wave of immigrant
workers looking for work in the US job market.

Major structural
changes must be made to NAFTA in order to restore lost jobs. Reforming
unfair trade policies will stimulate job growth on both sides of the
border and allow Mexican workers to remain in their motherland. We
must make fair trade a priority if we are to rebuild the American
middle class.

LGBT
Rights:

Senator Gravel
supports same-sex marriage and opposes the Defense of Marriage Act. He
supports expanding hate-crime legislation and opposes laws that allow
discrimination against sexual orientation, as well as discrimination
on the basis of one's gender identity or expression. In the absence of
full marriage rights, the senator supports domestic partner benefits
for all Americans. He strongly opposes the military's 'Don't Ask Don't
Tell' legislation on the grounds that it is unconstitutional, as it
restricts the rights of gay Americans, and he opposes any state or
national constitutional amendment that restricts the rights of the
LGBT community.

Social
Security:

Senator Mike
Gravel wants to put real money, rather than borrowed money, in the
Social Security Trust Fund, investing it properly and identifying the
interests of individual beneficiaries so they can leave their surplus
funds to their heirs. He also calls on Congress to stop raiding the
Social Security Trust Fund. This is key to ensuring that Social
Security will be around long after the Baby Boomers are gone for the
next generation of Americans who have paid into it.

Veterans
Affairs:

Senator Mike
Gravel enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1951 and served for three years as
an adjutant in the Communications Services and as a Special Agent in
the Counter Intelligence Corps. Our war veterans are not, as some
would have it, a “special interest” but are our primary interest.
As President, Sen. Gravel would ensure that veterans receive full and
unambiguous funding for their most important needs, including health
care that is indexed to the increasing cost of care and medicine. He
would also make permanent the 100 percent disability ratings of those
diagnosed as suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He
would also make sure that the VA system is fully financed and has
sufficient well-trained personnel to provide the finest care that is
available. As the senator says, “We can do no less and will do much
more.”

Education:

No Child Left
Behind has left far too many children behind. We have a dire situation
in America; 30% of our kids do not graduate from high school. Nearly a
third of our children are condemned to a substandard economic
existence. Education in America must be properly funded. However,
money will not solve all the problems. For example, Washington D.C.
ranks first in dollars spent, yet ranks last in achievement. We need
to approach education comprehensively. We must properly fund education
while raising the overall standard of living in America and making
education a vital part of a healthy, thriving community.

Prison/Drug
Reform:

The United
States incarcerates more people and at a higher rate than any other
peacetime nation in the world. According to the federal Bureau of
Justice Statistics the number of US residents behind bars has now
reached more than 2.3 million.

We are losing an
entire generation of young men and women to our prisons. Our
nation’s ineffective and wasteful “war on drugs” plays a major
role in this. We must place a greater emphasis on rehabilitation and
prevention. We must de-criminalize minor drug offenses and increase
the availability and visibility of substance abuse treatment and
prevention in our communities as well as in jails and prisons.

We must increase
the use of special drug courts in which addicted offenders are given
the opportunity to complete court supervised substance abuse treatment
instead of being sentenced to prison.We must eliminate
mandatory minimum sentencing laws. We must increase the use of
alternative penalties for nonviolent drug offenders. Drug defendants
convicted of nonviolent offenses should not be given mandatory prison
sentences. We should emphasize the criminalization of the importers,
manufacturers, and major distributors, rather than just the street
venders. Prisons in this country should be a legitimate criminal
sanction -- but it should be an extension of a fair, just and wise
society.

2nd
Amendment Rights:

While Senator
Gravel fully supports the 2nd Amendment, he believes that fundamental
change must take place with regards to gun ownership. The senator
advocates a licensing program where a potential gun owner must be
licensed as well as properly trained with a firearm before they may
own one.

Women's
Right to Choose:

Senator Gravel
supports a woman's right to choose and a woman's control over her
own body. That is why the Senator supports the Constitutional right
of all Americans to privacy under the 14th Amendment and the 1973
Supreme Court Case, Roe v. Wade, which upholds this principle. Any
decision on reproductive rights should remain between a woman and
her doctor. There should be no room for interference from
politicians and judges.

"There
are Americans who say that by leaving Iraq, we would be saying that our
soldiers died in vain. But the only thing worse than soldiers dying in vain,
is more soldiers dying in vain. The longer our presence sustains the
violence, the more innocent civilians will die as well.”

"We have become a
nation ruled by fear. Since the end of the Second World War, various
political leaders have fostered fear in the American people--fear of
Communism, fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants, fear of people based on
race and religion, fear of Gays and Lesbian in love who just want to get
married, and fear of people who are somehow different. It is fear that
allows political leaders to manipulate us all and distort our national
priorities."

"What
is the essence of this country that we are being patriotic about? A
real love of America -- an authentic patriotism -- must be based on
more than a moralizing grumph, a smug assertion, a bumper-sticker
slogan. We've all heard the phrase, "my country right or
wrong." I think we can all agree, this leaves something to be
desired. No, I think a true patriotism -- a truly MacArthuresque love
of country -- can leave some room for loving the sinner, but hating
the sin. The American who calls a critic or doubter to task as
un-American is -- himself -- in that instant, the true anti-patriot.
It is the American who defends the right to disagree, and who hears
and sees and embraces the voices of diversity, who is the truest and
greatest lover of America."

"We can feed the
collective fantasy that our good intentions and heroic efforts were thwarted
by the cowardice and incompetence of others. But if that's what we take from
our experience in Iraq, we will never learn the true lessons and we will be
condemned to repeat the same mistakes."

"The inability to admit a mistake
and assume responsibility is not just a morally bankrupt way to walk through
life; it is a dangerous and deadly way to lead a nation. When I am
president, I will open up all secret files relating to the Iraq war and
expose all officials who lied to the public in promoting it. (That's right,
Dick, your files too.) My Justice Department will prosecute everyone who
lied under oath or ripped off the American taxpayer by exploiting the Iraq
reconstruction effort. And I will pardon no one."

"Those who seek national
leadership positions must tell Americans the truth. Americans can handle the
truth. Having reliable information is the only way to dispel the fear-based
culture that our leaders have drugged us with for the last 60 years,
concealing reality. The reality
is, the United States is No. 1 only in weaponry, consumer spending,
government and personal debt, in the number of people we have in prison and,
I would say, in delusion."

"We
are a moral and fair-minded people. As a nation, we must put aside our
arrogance and demand that our leaders work together with other nations and
peoples, treating them as equals. There is no other way to reverse the
environmental threat of global warming, a threat more real than nuclear
proliferation. In the global village, the United States produces the most
pollution and supplies the largest amount of weaponry, facts that our
leadership ignores. We have a failure of leadership––a leadership that
fails to face reality."

"Politicians are averse to
dealing critically with the military establishment and our defense
policies for fear of having their patriotism questioned. We should be
guided by President Eisenhower's warning that an inordinate emphasis
on military power breeds a culture of militarism that threatens other
vital areas of our society; and that eventually, an inordinate
emphasis on military power will guarantee our collapse as a great
nation and as a democracy. Unfortunately, no president since Dwight
Eisenhower has even dared to acknowledge the problem."

"The U.S. as the mightiest
nation in the world claims the right to police the world, but the cost
of this declared right is a bloated defense budget and a defense
industry that knows no limits. Our militarized economy is both a
direct cost to American taxpayers and an indirect cost in the loss of
funding for education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Some around the
world are beginning to ask: who polices the policeman?"